on leaned back in his chair and slowly looked about him. He was
conscious that he was drawing deeper breath than usual, and that his
heart beat quickly, but he was so much surprised that for the moment his
thoughts appeared to scatter themselves about, and he knew not how to
marshal them and make them help him as to what this might mean.

Mystery in romance and in tales is such a common vulgar thing, in
tragedy and even in comedy it is so completely what we demand and
expect, that we seldom consider what an astonishing and very uncommon
thing it is when it appears in life. And here in a commonplace,
well-conducted, happy, and united family was a mystery pointing to
something that one of its best-loved members had never had a hint of.
Whatever it was, it concerned a place little more, than fifty miles off,
and a man in whose presence he had lived from his early childhood; the
utmost caution of secrecy was demanded, and the matter spoken of
entirely changed the notions he had always held concerning his
step-father, whom he had thought he knew better than any man living.
When one had believed that one absolutely understood another, how it
startles the mind to discover that this is a mistake! A beautiful old
man this had been--pious, not very worldly-wise, but having a sweetness
of nature, a sunny smile, and a native ease about him that would not
have been possible without a quiet conscience. This he had possessed,
but "I forbade my mother to leave her property to me." His step-son
turned back the page, and looked at those words again. Then his eyes
fell lower. "In her case I know not what I could have done." "When did
he forbid this--was it ten years ago, twenty years, fifty years? He was
really very well off when he married my mother. Now where did he get the
property that he lost by his speculations? Not by the law; his
profession never brought him in more than two hundred a year. Oh! he had
it from the old cousin that he and Grand often talk of, old John
Mortimer. And that's where the old silver plate came from. Of course,
and where John got his name.

"We always knew, I think, that there was an aged mother; now why did I
take for granted that she must be in her second childhood? I wonder
whether John put that into my head. I think I did remark to him once
when I was a boy and he was living at home, that it was odd there was no
portrait of her in either of the houses. (But no more there is of Grand
now I come to think